H.P. Lovecraft. Medusa's Coil
Medusa's Coil
by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop
Written May 1930
Published January 1939 in Weird Tales, 33, No. 1, 26-53.
The drive toward Cape Girardeau had been through unfamiliar country; and
as the late afternoon light grew golden and half-dreamlike I realized that
I must have directions if I expected to reach the town before night. I did
not care to be wandering about these bleak southern Missouri lowlands
after dark, for roads were poor and the November cold rather formidable in
an open roadster. Black clouds, too, were massing on the horizon; so I
looked about among the long, grey and blue shadows that streaked the flat,
brownish fields, hoping to glimpse some house where I might get the needed
information.
It was a lonely and deserted country, but at last I spied a roof among a
clump of trees near the small river on my right; perhaps a full half-mile
from the road, and probably reachable by some path or drive which I would
presently come upon. In the absence of any nearer dwelling, I resolved to
try my luck there; and was glad when the bushes by the roadside revealed
the ruin of a carved stone gateway, covered with dry, dead vines and
choked with undergrowth which explained why I had not been able to trace
the path across the fields in my first distant view. I saw that I could
not drive the car in, so I parked it very carefully near the gate - where
a thick evergreen would shield it in case of rain - and got out for the
long walk to the house.
Traversing that brush-growth path in the gathering twilight I was
conscious of a distinct sense of foreboding, probably induced by the air
of sinister decay hovering about the gate and the former driveway. From
the carvings on the old stone pillars I inferred that this place was once
an estate of manorial dignity; and I could clearly see that the driveway
had originally boasted guardian lines of linden trees, some of which had
died, while others had lost their special identity among the wild scrub
growths of the region.
As I ploughed onward, cockleburs and stickers clung to my clothes, and I
began to wonder whether the place could be inhabited after all. Was I
tramping on a vain errand? For a moment I was tempted to go back and try
some farm farther along the road, when a view of the house ahead aroused
my curiosity and stimulated my venturesome spirit.
There was something provocatively fascinating in the tree-girt, decrepit
pile before me, for it spoke of the graces and spaciousness of a bygone
era and a far more southerly environment. It was a typical wooden
plantation house of the classic, early nineteenth-century pattern, with
two and a half stories and a great Ionic portico whose pillars reached up
as far as the attic and supported a triangular pediment. Its state of
decay was extreme and obvious; one of the vast columns having rotted and
fallen to the ground, while the upper piazza or balcony had sagged
dangerously low. Other buildings, I judged, had formerly stood near it.
As I mounted the broad stone steps to the low porch and the carved and
fanlighted doorway I felt distinctly nervous, and started to light a
cigarette - desisting when I saw how dry and inflammable everything about
me was. Though now convinced that the house was deserted, I nevertheless
hesitated to violate its dignity without knocking; so tugged at the rusty
iron knocker until I could get it to move, and finally set up a cautious
rapping which seemed to make the whole place shake and rattle. There was
no response, yet once more I plied the cumbrous, creaking device - as much
to dispel the sense of unholy silence and solitude as to arouse any
possible occupant of the ruin.
Somewhere near the river I heard the mournful not of a dove, and it seemed
as if the coursing water itself were faintly audible. Half in a dream, I
seized and rattled the ancient latch, and finally gave the great
six-panelled door a frank trying. It was unlocked, as I could see in a
moment; and though it stuck and grated on its hinges I began to push it
open, stepping through it into a vast shadowy hall as I did so.
But the moment I took this step I regretted it. It was not that a legion
of specters confronted me in that dim and dusty hall with the ghostly
Empire furniture; but that I knew all at once that the place was not
deserted at all. There was a creaking on the great curved staircase, and
the sound of faltering footsteps slowly descending. Then I saw a tall,
bent figure silhouetted for an instant against the great Palladian window
on the landing.
My first start of terror was soon over, and as the figure descended the
final flight I was ready to greet the householder whose privacy I had
invaded. In the semi-darkness I could see him reach in his pocket for a
match. There came a flare as he lighted a small kerosene lamp which stood
on a rickety console table near the foot of the stairs. In the feeble glow
was revealed the stooping figure of a very tall, emaciated old man;
disordered as to dress and unshaved as to face, yet for all that with the
bearing and expression of a gentleman.
I did not wait for him to speak, but at once began to explain my presence.
"You'll pardon my coming in like this, but when my knocking didn't raise
anybody I concluded that no one lived here. What I wanted originally was
to know the right road to Cape Girardeau - the shortest road, that is. I
wanted to get there before dark, but now, of course - "
As I paused, the man spoke; in exactly the cultivated tone I had expected,
and with a mellow accent as unmistakably Southern as the house he
inhabited.
"Rather, you must pardon me for not answering your knock more promptly. I
live in a very retired way, and am not usually expecting visitors. At
first I thought you were a mere curiosity-seeker. Then when you knocked
again I started to answer, but I am not well and have to move very slowly.
Spinal neuritis - very troublesome case.
"But as for your getting to town before dark - it's plain you can't do
that. The road you are one - for I suppose you came from the gate - isn't
the best or shortest way. What you must do is to take your first left
after you leave the gate - that is, the first real road to your left.
There are three or four cart paths you can ignore, but you can't mistake
the real road because of the extra large willow tree on the right just
opposite it. Then when you've turned, keep on past two roads and turn to
the right along the third. After that - "
"Please wait a moment! How can I follow all these clues in pitch darkness,
without ever having been near here before, and with only an indifferent
pair of headlights to tell me what is and what isn't a road? Besides, I
think it's going to storm pretty soon, and my car is an open one. It looks
as if I were in a bad fix if I want to get to Cape Girardeau tonight. The
fact is, I don't think I'd better try to make it. I don't like to impose
burdens, or anything like that - but in view of the circumstances, do you
suppose you could put me up for the night? I won't be any trouble - no
meals or anything. Just let me have a corner to sleep in till daylight,
and I'm all right. I can leave the car in the road where it is - a bit of
wet weather won't hurt it if worst comes to worst."
As I made my sudden request I could see the old man's face lose its former
expression of quiet resignation and take on an odd, surprised look.
"Sleep - here?"
He seemed so astonished at my request that I repeated it.
"Yes, why not? I assure you I won't be any trouble. What else can I do?
I'm a stranger hereabouts, these roads are a labyrinth in the dark, and
I'll wager it'll be raining torrents outside of an hour - "
This time it my host's turn to interrupt, and as he did so I could feel a
peculiar quality in his deep, musical voice.
"A stranger - of course you must be, else you wouldn't think of sleeping
here, wouldn't think of coming here at all. People don't come here
nowadays."
He paused, and my desire to stay was increased a thousandfold by the sense
of mystery his laconic words seemed to evoke. There was surely something
alluringly queer about this place, and the pervasive musty smell seemed to
cloak a thousand secrets. Again I noticed the extreme decrepitude of
everything about me; manifest even in the feeble rays of the single small
lamp. I felt woefully chilly, and saw with regret that no heating was
provided, and yet so great was my curiosity that I still wished most
ardently to stay and learn something of the recluse and his dismal abode.
"Let that be as it may," I replied. "I can't help about other people. But
I surely would like to have a spot to stop till daylight. Still - if
people don't relish this place, mayn't it be because it's getting so
run-down? Of course I suppose it a take a fortune to keep such an estate
up, but if the burden's too great why don't you look for smaller quarters?
Why try to stick it out here in this way - with all the hardships and
discomforts?"
The man did not seem offended, but answered me very gravely.
"Surely you may stay if you really wish to - you can come to no harm that
I know of. But others claim there are certain peculiarly undesirable
influences here. As for me - I stay here because I have to. There is
something I feel it a duty to guard - something that holds me. I wish I
had the money and health and ambition to take decent care of the house and
grounds."
With my curiosity still more heightened, I prepared to take my host at his
word; and followed him slowly upstairs when he motioned me to do so. It
was very dark now, and a faint pattering outside told me that the
threatened rain had come. I would have been glad of any shelter, but this
was doubly welcome because of the hints of mystery about the place and its
master. For an incurable lover of the grotesque, no more fitting haven
could have been provided.
II
There was a second-floor corner room in less unkempt shape than the rest
of the house, and into this my host led me, setting down his small lamp
and lighting a somewhat larger one. From the cleanliness and contents of
the room, and from the books ranged along the walls, I could see that I
had not guessed amiss in thinking the man a gentleman of taste of
breeding. He was a hermit and eccentric, no doubt, but he still had
standards and intellectual interests. As he waved me to a seat I began a
conversation on general topics, and was pleased to find him not at all
taciturn. If anything, he seemed glad of someone to talk, and did not even
attempt to swerve the discussion from personal topics.
He was, I learned, one Antoine de Russy, of an ancient, powerful, and
cultivated line of Louisiana planters. More than a century ago his
grandfather, a younger so, had migrated to southern Missouri and founded a
new estate in the lavish ancestral manner; building this pillared mansion
and surrounding it with all the accessories of a great plantation. There
had been, at one time, as many as 200 negroes in the cabins which stood on
the flat ground in the rear - ground that the river had now invaded - and
to hear them singing and laughing and playing the banjo at night was to
know the fullest charm of a civilization and social order now sadly
extinct. In front of the house, where the great guardian oaks and willows
stood, there had been a lawn like a broad green carpet, always watered and
trimmed and with flagstoned, flower-bordered walks curving through it.
"Riverside" - for such the place was called - had been a lovely and
idyllic homestead in its day; and my host could recall it when many traces
of its best period.
It was raining hard now, with dense sheets of water beating against the
insecure roof, walls, and windows, and sending in drops through a thousand
chinks and crevices. Moisture trickled down to the floor from unsuspected
places, and the mounting wind rattled the rotting, loose-hinged shutters
outside. But I minded none of this, for I saw that a story was coming.
Incited to reminiscence, my host made a move to shew me to
sleeping-quarters; but kept on recalling the older, better days. Soon, I
saw, I would receive an inkling of why he lived alone in that ancient
place, and why his neighbours thought it full of undesirable influences.
His voice was very musical as he spoke on, and his tale soon took a turn
which left me no chance to grow drowsy.
"Yes - Riverside was built in 1816, and my father was born in 1828. He'd
be over a century old now if he were alive, but he died young - so young I
can just barely remember him. In '64 that was - he was killed in the war,
Seventh Louisiana Infantry C.S.A., for he went back to the old home to
enlist. My grandfather was too old to fight, yet he lived on to be
ninety-five, and helped my mother bring me up. A good bringing-up, too -
I'll give them credit. We always had strong traditions - high notions of
honor - and my grandfather saw to it that I grew up the way de Russys have
grown up, generation after generation, ever since the Crusades. We weren't
quite wiped out financially, but managed to get on very comfortable after
the war. I went to a good school in Louisiana, and later to Princeton.
Later on I was able to get the plantation on a fairly profitable basis -
though you see what it's come to now.
"My mother died when I was twenty, and my grandfather two years later. It
was rather lonely after that; and in '85 I married a distant cousin in New
Orleans. Things might have bee different if she'd lived, but she died when
my son Denis was born. Then I had only Denis. I didn't try marriage again,
but gave all my time to the boy. He was like me - like all the de Russys -
darkish and tall and thin, and with the devil of a temper. I gave him the
same training my grandfather had give me, but he didn't need much training
when it came to points of honor. It was in him, I reckon. Never saw such
high spirit - all I could do to keep him from running away to the Spanish
War when he was eleven! Romantic young devil, too - full of high notions -
you'd call 'em Victorian, now - no trouble at all to make him let the
nigger wenches alone. I sent him to the same school I'd gone to, and to
Princeton, too. He was Class of 1909.
"In the end he decided to be a doctor, and went a year to the Harvard
Medical School. Then he hit on the idea of keeping to the old French
tradition of the family, and argued me into sending him across to the
Sorbonne. I did - and proudly enough, though I knew I'd be how lonely I'd
be with him so far off. Would to God I hadn't! I thought he was the safest
kind of boy to be in Paris. He had a room in the Rue St. Jacques - that's
near the University in the 'Latin Quarter' - but according to his letters
and his friends he didn't cut up with the gayer dogs at all. The people he
knew were mostly young fellows from home - serious students and artists
who thought more of their work than of striking attitudes and painting the
town red.
"But of course there were lots of fellows who were on a sort of dividing
line between serious studies and the devil. The aesthetes - the decadents,
you know. Experiments in life and sensation - the Baudelaire kind of a
chap. Naturally Denis ran up against a good many of these, and saw a good
deal of their life. They had all sorts of crazy circles and cults -
imitation devil-worship, fake Black Masses, and the like. Doubt if it did
them much harm on the whole - probably most of 'em forgot all about it in
a year or two. One of the deepest in this queer stuff was a fellow Denis
had known at school - for that matter, whose father I'd known myself.
Frank Marsh, of New Orleans. Disciple of Lafcadio Hearn and Gauguin and
Van Gogh - regular epitome of the yellow 'nineties. Poor devil - he had
the makings of a great artist, at that.
"Marsh was the oldest friend Denis had in Paris, so as a matter of course
they saw a good deal of each other - to talk over old times at St. Clair
academy, and all that. The boy wrote me a good deal about him, and I
didn't see any especial harm when he spoke of the group of mystics Marsh
ran with. It seems there was some cult of prehistoric Egyptian and
Carthaginian magic having a rage among the Bohemian element on the left
bank - some nonsensical thing that pretended to reach back to forgotten
sources of hidden truth in lost African civilisations - the great
Zimbabwe, the dead Atlantean cities in the Haggar region of the Sahara -
and they had a lot of gibberish concerned with snakes and human hair. At
least, I called it gibberish, then. Denis used to quote Marsh as saying
odd things about the veiled facts behind the legend of Medusa's snaky
locks - and behind the later Ptolemaic myth of Berenice, who offered up
her hair to save her husband-brother, and had it set in the sky as the
constellation Coma Berenices.
"I don't think this business made much impression on Denis until the night
of the queer ritual at Marsh's rooms when he met the priestess. Most of
the devotees of the cult were young fellows, but the head of it was a
young woman who called herself 'Tanit-Isis' - letting it be known that her
real name - her name in this latest incarnation, as she put it - was
Marceline Bedard. She claimed to be the left-handed daughter of Marquis de
Chameaux, and seemed to have been both a petty artist and an artist's
model before adopting this more lucrative magical game. Someone said she
had lived for a time in the West Indies - Martinique, I think - but she
was very reticent about herself. Part of her pose was a great show of
austerity and holiness, but I don't think the more experienced students
took that very seriously.
"Denis, though, was far from experienced, and wrote me fully ten pages of
slush about the goddess he had discovered. If I'd only realised his
simplicity I might have done something, but I never thought a puppy
infatuation like could mean much. I felt absurdly sure that Denis' touchy
personal honour and family pride would always keep him out of the most
serious complications.
"As time went, though, his letters began to make me nervous. He mentioned
this Marceline more and more, and his friends less and les, and began
talking about the 'cruel and silly way' they declined to introduce her to
their mothers and sisters. He seems to have asked her no questions about
herself, and I don't doubt but that she filled him full of romantic
legendry concerning her origin and divine revelations and the way people
slighted her. At length I could see that Denis was altogether cutting his
own crowd and spending the bulk of his time with his alluring priestess.
At her especial request he never told the old crowd of their continual
meetings; so nobody over there tried to break the affair up.
"I suppose she thought he was fabulously rich; for he had the air of a
patrician, and people of a certain class think all aristocratic Americans
are wealthy. In any case, she probably thought this a rare chance to
contract a genuine right-handed alliance with a really eligible young man.
By the time my nervousness burst into open advice, it was too late. The
boy had lawfully married her, and wrote that he was dropping his studies
and bringing the woman home to Riverside. He said she had made a great
sacrifice and resigned her leadership of the magical cult, and that
henceforward she would be merely a private gentlewoman - the future
mistress of Riverside, and mother of de Russys to come.
"Well, sir, I took it the best way I could. I knew that sophisticated
Continentals have different standards from our old American ones - and
anyway, I really knew nothing against the woman. A charlatan, perhaps, but
why necessarily any worse? I suppose I tried to keep as naive as possible
about such things in those days, for the boy's sake. Clearly, there was
nothing for a man of sense to do but let Denis alone so long as his new
wife conformed to de Russy ways. Let her have a chance to prove herself -
perhaps she wouldn't hurt the family as much as some might fear. So I
didn't raise any objections or ask any penitence. The thing was done, and
I stood ready to welcome the boy back, whatever he brought with him.
"They got here three weeks after the telegram telling of marriage.
Marceline was beautiful - there was no denying that - and I could see how
the boy might very well get foolish about her. She did have an air of
breeding, and I think to this day she must have had some strains of good
blood in her. She was apparently not much over twenty; of medium size,
fairly slim, and as graceful as a tigress in posture and motion. Her
complexion was a deep olive - like old ivory - and her eyes were large and
very dark. She had small, classically regular features - though not quite
clean-cut enough to suit my taste - and the most singular braid of jet
black hair that I ever saw.
"I didn't wonder that she had dragged the subject of hair into her magical
cult, for with that heavy profusion of it the idea must have occurred to
her naturally. Coiled up, it made her look like some Oriental princess in
a drawing of Aubrey Beardsley's. Hanging down her back, it came well below
her knees and shone in the light as if it had possessed some separate,
unholy vitality of its own. I would almost have thought of Medusa or
Berenice myself - without having such things suggested to me - upon seeing
and studying that hair.
"Sometimes I thought it moved slightly of itself, and tended to arrange
itself in distinct ropes or strands, but this may have been sheer
illusion. She braided it incessantly, and seemed to use some sort of
preparation on it. I got the notion once - a curious, whimsical notion -
that it was a living being which she had to feed in some strange way. All
nonsense - but it added to my feeling of constraint about her and her
hair.
"For I can't deny that I failed to like her wholly, no matter how hard I
tried. I couldn't tell what the trouble was, but it was there. Something
about her repelled me very subtly, and I could not help weaving morbid and
macabre associations about everything connected with her. Her complexion
called up thoughts of Babylon, Atlantis, Lemuria, and the terrible
forgotten dominations of an elder world; her eyes struck me sometimes as
the eyes of some unholy forest creature or animal goddess too immeasurably
ancient to be fully human; and her hair - that dense, exotic,
overnourished growth of oily inkiness - made one shiver as a great black
python might have done. There was no doubt but that she realised my
involuntary attitude - though I tried to hide it, and she tried to hide
the fact that she noticed it.
"Yet the boy's infatuation lasted. He positively fawned on her, and
overdid all the little gallantries of daily life to a sickening degree.
She appeared to return the feeling, though I could see it took a conscious
effort to make her duplicate his enthusiasms and extravagances. For one